Provisioning

Yesterday we settled in by getting our first withdrawal of pesos and grocery shopping.  Argentina's official exchange rate is about 5.5 pesos to the dollar, but the unofficial rate is about 6.7 pesos to the dollar.  If you withdraw money from an ATM or pay with credit cards you get the official rate.  If you bring dollars with you can apparently exchange them on the "blue market", but that requires finding a place or person who will offer a good rate.  We opted for the middle road of sending ourselves a weekly allowance through a company called Xoom that does money transfers around the world.  They currently have an exchange rate of 6.4 pesos to dollars and you pick up your money at a respectable looking office in the city center.  We brought dollars to pay for our apartment and some internal travel as you get a better deal that way.  Apparently with so many Argentines going on vacation this time of year to the U.S., it is particularly hard for the average citizen to find dollars right now.

With our new influx of pesos we went grocery shopping in our neighborhood.  First stop was the San Telmo Market, a market that covers most of a city block and has lots of food stalls as well as antique stalls, clothing stalls, etc.  We picked up the vegetables makings for ratatouille and a dozen eggs.  The eggs are wrapped up carefully in newspaper for transport!   We dropped those bags back at home and then went to the local Carrefour grocery store for the basics.  Their fruit and vegetable selection is rather limited and we noticed that eggs in the grocery cost twice as much as they did from the poultry market stall.  Carrefour everything else we needed though, except for peanut butter.  That may require a specialty shop or a really big grocery store!

We had gone to a local coffee shop, La Poesia, around 5pm for a "snack" of a lomo sandwich.  Expecting a small sandwich we were surprised when the waitress brought out a large tenderloin steak draped across a piece of bread.  Delicious!  We held off on making ratatouille until 10 pm too, so we are really feeling like we have gotten on the Argentine eating schedule now!